Pale: 7.2 - Lucy
Author: Wildbow

Gone Ahead – 7.2 | Pale

Lucy hung back, crouching in the trees.  Her sleeveless top had a hood, and she’d tied her hair into a loose braid and then wound it into a bun so she could keep the hood up.

Her mask was in her lap and the eyes burned red – a cosmetic choice that she’d made weeks ago, that was twice as pronounced now.  It might have something to do with the earring that she’d clipped to the ear of the fox mask, upside-down so the wire and crystal dangled from the tip.

More importantly, she’d done some work a long time ago to turn that light into something to penetrate the dark.  A bit of night vision.  She’d need it, since it was evening, now, and a gloomy, lightless one.  The campus didn’t exactly have floodlights, and it didn’t have windows large enough for the indoor lighting to light up much of the outdoors.  Most of the light from the inside only reached about ten or fifteen feet from the building, much of it tinted blue from the treatment of the windows.

More blue-tinted light came from the bright LED flashlights that students walking outside used.  The patrolling students -and they were a patrol, really- weren’t lit up.  Only the paths around them.  They were dark silhouettes, and that complicated things.  Not knowing who they were dealing with could be disastrous, when it was the difference between a violence-happy Hennigar and someone like Jarvis, who was very good at binding humans.

Lucy took some of Maricica’s glamour that Avery was holding and gave the mask a one-handed wipe-down.  Fingernails scraped the painted wood-grain as she turned the color to black.  Only the edges and the most raised edges retained the red.  She extinguished the cosmetic effect at the eyes, leaving the night vision in place.

She pulled it on.  The world became a bit brighter, albeit red-tinted.

It was a massive pain that the Nettlewisp still sat in her left hand, waiting to be triggered.  But Guilherme had explained the need for fair contests when he’d gone over the dueling stuff.  These things worked better if the other person walked into it, instead of it being a one-sided, forced result.  Those same one-sided approaches, bullying or extorting someone into something, could often result in backlash.

Avery did something similar, painting the deer mask black.  With her hands still covered in the pigment that had come about from the mix of water and dust, Lucy reached over to help.

“Thank you,” Avery said, quiet.

Toadswallow, lurking in a bush, and Gashwad, on a tree branch above them, didn’t comment on the use of Fae practices..

They watched as the gathering students got settled in the workshop Elizabeth had requisitioned.  Some of Bristow’s group were outside as well.  Hostile or dangerous students who were free to mess with them.  Either those students could do something and the staff would overlook it, or they’d get expelled at the same time the targeted students did.  A lot of that would depend on which teachers saw.  Ray or Durocher would probably expel both, keeping to strict school rules.  Guest teachers?  They could be looser.

Lucy imagined Bristow’s group would be strategic about that.  Once they started making moves, they could give up their weakest group member for the best of the group that was made up of Belanger loyalists and the people who hadn’t taken a side.

Verona was inside, helping out.  The doors were open, because there were so many people and it was warm out.  Verona laughed, throwing a bundle of cloth to Tashlit, who wasn’t visible through the open door.

She’s happier like this, in a war between practitioners, than she is back home.  I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen her this mellow.

The thought coincided with a spooky vertigo-like feeling.  Except Lucy wasn’t standing on a cliff’s edge or anything.  It was only her and Verona.

Lucy was left grasping for something, some way that she could do something about Verona.  What were the options?  How could she keep her friend from slipping all the way into this world, when it was so enticing, filled with things that were one hundred percent Verona’s jam?

“Do you think Verona and Jeremy are going to end up a thing?” Lucy asked.

“I know he’s interested, and I think she’s more interested than she realizes.”

“Maybe listen to Verona, when she says she doesn’t want to get into a relationship?”

“But like… what if she does, though, and she doesn’t get that?  We’re all new to this, and it’s so easy to be dumb about stuff.  I was all about George and Amadeus because they’re cute but after being around them a bit more, and being around Wallace, I’m wondering what I was thinking.”

“That they’re cute,” Avery said, finishing up her mask.  She held it up for approval, and Lucy nodded.

“The less said the better?” Avery ventured.

“Well, on some stuff.  But Pam is cool.  Way better for a first crush than George and Amadeus.  So you got that right.”

“I guess.  Except I messed up.”

“But that’s what I’m saying.  We’re messing up a lot.”

“Ahem,” Toadswallow made a noise as he stood on his toes, peering out at the ongoing events.  The patrol group of students had passed by the other side of the building Verona and the rest were in.  Elizabeth’s workshop, protected grounds.

“What’s up, Toadswallow?” Avery asked.

“Do we even want to know?” Lucy asked.

“Remember what I said about war and fighting, my dears?” Toadswallow asked, voice guttural.  “I dare say the matters of men and women, men and men, women and women, men and sheep-”

“Toad.”  Lucy made her voice stern.

He chuckled.  Gashwad followed suit.  “-It’s messy.  Especially the goats.  It doesn’t get less messy.  You find someone to wallow in the mess with you.”

“That’s a worrying phrasing, with your name and everything, Toadswallow.”

“Do you have anyone?” Avery asked.  “Is there a Mrs. Toadswallow in the cards?  Or Mr.?”

“Sometimes there’s a someone.  But much as I said, it’s sloppy and messy.  Life pulls us in different directions.  She’s a familiar right now and I won’t see her until the fist-biting chump she’s partnered with slips from this mortal coil.”

“I’m not sure what to say to that,” Avery said.  “If I wish you luck I’d be hoping for the guy to die.”

“I dare say that being at a loss for words is a fine response to something a goblin says,” Toadswallow remarked.  “Here’s John.”

John emerged from the building Verona was in, holding several bags at his back, one hand at the strap, the other at his hip.  The light rain soaked him, and he didn’t flinch or seem to care.  He was followed by Snowdrop, who still wore the jacket from earlier, along with rain boots and a black t-shirt dress.

“You know what bringing him means?” Toadswallow said, voice low.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She looked at Avery, who nodded.

“Violence,” Gashwad said.

John slipped one bag from his shoulder and tossed it to Gashwad up in the tree.  He did the same for Toadswallow.

“We ready?” Avery asked.

They kept to the trees at the west side of campus, passing by the workshop buildings, then the west wing of the school, which was framed by shrubbery and gardens.  The blue-tinted light from a western bedroom extended most of the way toward them, diffuse.  A gauzy curtain hid the view.

Avery, black rope in hand, weaved between the trees, and the trees she disappeared behind weren’t the same trees she emerged from behind.  In the gloom, it was a trippy effect.

“When I was playing lacrosse with the others the other day, you walked over this way,” Avery noted.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Took a look.”

‘This way’ was the back corner of the blasting field.  The construction of Bristow’s building was underway, the bottom floor mostly done, except for some of the exterior work.  They kept to the outside edge of the field.

Lucy tilted her head, trying to make out the building and see if there was anyone out there.  “There were warnings.  That usual permissions, protections, and student stuff wasn’t valid, not to cross certain boundaries without a teacher’s okay, that sort of thing.”

“Good,” Gashwad growled.

“Is it?” Lucy asked.  “I genuinely don’t know.  I think it means we can’t bring familiars across, and even students might get zapped or something.”

“It’s good because it’s different.  If they recently changed it, there’s more chances they made mistakes.”

“The little goblins and things didn’t say the field was impossible to cross,” Snowdrop said.

“Good to know,” Lucy said.  “Does that mean it’s dangerous, and we get zapped for trying, or does it mean there’s a barrier?”

Gashwad peeked out of the trees, then ventured out, putting a hand out.

“Careful,” Avery hissed.

His hand found resistance, touching an invisible wall.

“Some practitioner houses are like this,” Toadswallow noted.  “They lay the foundation with its own protections.”

“The fields have this sort of dueling thing going on,” Lucy said.  “Healing the combatants after they leave or after the duel ends.”

“Expensive work,” Toadswallow said.

“This isn’t a house, though,” Avery said. “It’s the entire field, and the building they’re putting up is on the field.”

“I think they cleared the area of trees, they laid the stones and circles down, then they placed soil over top,” Lucy said, bending down.  She turned on her Sight, and she could see the heavy staining of the field, the fragments of metal that littered it.  As she straightened up and walked, the fragments closest to her faded, the ones in the distance remaining.

“Gash, this is your moment to shine,” Toadswallow said.

Gashwad spat.  “I thought I was called here to fight.”

“You’re good at getting into places,” John said.  “The fighting might come later.”

Gashwad spat again.  He scampered ahead, moving on all fours, nose and eyes close to the ground, like he was looking along it.  Avery and Snowdrop jogged forward to keep up.

John, meanwhile, turned his focus to the building.  Lucy followed his gaze.  A single light was on, but it looked like it was at the far end of the building, the illumination diffusing through the rest of the rooms on the ground floor.

“Bristow and his Aware have been staying here.  The time loop guy, Ted, then Shellie, the Bright-Eyed sister of Daniel, Kevin and Kevin’s girlfriend… he’s got an evil eye and she’s got something else.”

“Are they holding America here?” Toadswallow asked.

“Our dame was expelled but she didn’t go home.  She didn’t go to the local jetsam-of-dry-land.  Her sister doesn’t know where she is.”

“Are you close?” Lucy asked.

“Taught them the beginnings of what they know.  I’m Uncle Toad to them.  Fine, distinguished young ladies of the upper crust, until I got to them.  They liked what I taught enough to pursue it as their specialty.”

“Their dad isn’t a big goblin mage?”

“Some.  And many other things.  There’s a reason they haven’t called him.”

Gashwad had his head in a hole in the ground.  He wiggled his way in.

“This should take a minute,” Toadswallow said.  “Let’s step back.”

They did, retreating into the trees.

A group of students patrolling the grounds with flashlights emerged from the western end of the building.  They stopped at the door, talking to a tall man.  Because the man was in the doorway, the lights from either side of him made his features clearer.  He wore a white t-shirt under an open black blazer, matching slacks, and a necklace, and he had brown hair with a dense wave to it, like the locks of hair had been stretched under one finger, over the next, under the next, and so on.  He wore glasses that had no arms stretching from the edges to the ears.

The look didn’t really make her think ‘teacher’.  It made her think, like, an agent for actors or musicians, striking that look that was both casual and expensive, and very deliberate.  The look in his eyes, the cast of his mouth, and his posture made her think that if he were one of those agents, he’d deal with a stalker fan of one of his clients by contracting some guys with baseball bats and ties to organized crime.

The hair made her think of Raquel and Reid.

Now that she had a guess as to who he was, she could notice other things: he had a way of standing and moving like he was carrying a lot of weight, but he’d done it for so long that he’d gotten used to it.  One hand gesture in the air, to punctuate a statement, and it felt like it had enough weight to knock on the air.

“Come on, just turn the other way and go inside,” Lucy whispered.

Something changed in the field.  A snap, and the wind blew.  Leaves and strands of grass scattered.

“That’s the barrier,” John whispered.

We have access to the field and the outside of the building, now, Lucy thought.  Except…

Except the practitioners at the door had noticed.

They came, now.  Musser followed behind the group, and pulled off his jacket, casting it aside.  It fluttered briefly in the wind, then disappeared.  White t-shirt that probably cost more than a hundred bucks, necklace, watch, rings, and the glimmer of things at his pockets that suggested he couldn’t even put his hands in them.  They weren’t overstuffed, either.

She glanced over the students and recognized Hadley Hennigar and Maddox the spellbinder.  There were two more but she didn’t dare look for long enough for them to see.

“Draw on my power, let me hear,” Lucy whispered.

John put a hand on her shoulder, pulling her further into the trees as the people approached.  Avery had already withdrawn, carrying a Snowdrop-as-animal.  Toadswallow hurried after them.

“Are they going after the headmaster?”

“I don’t see anything.”

The group slowed as they got closer.  Maddox paused, peering into the trees.

Lucy drew down, deeper into the foliage, until John’s hand at her shoulder made her stop.  His fingers gripped her, hard enough that it almost hurt.

She could see.  A goblin, at the pile of construction materials, not moving especially fast.

She looked back at where she’d last seen Toadswallow, standing next to Avery, then connected the dots.

She’d lent him the black rope.

“Watch out!” Musser called out.  “He left things behind!”

Toadswallow cackled as he ran off.

Some of the students backed off.  But one, Hadley, kept charging forward.

A box sat perched on one pile of planks with a tarp loosely thrown over top, with near-black, moist, and maybe rotted wood stretching and shuddering, as it nearly burst at the seams.  And Hadley swiped out with a knife as she ran past.

It spun in a three-quarter circle, then detonated, and the swipe maybe controlled some of that detonation, pushing seventy percent of it away from her.

Slime, stringy, cascaded out, the initial bands a black substance as thin as water, surrounding green-yellow bands that slapped down and formed mucus-y bands.  Hadley’s feet skidded on the black and she nearly spun around as the band of mucus slapped down across the ground, touching her hand, and bound both, like a tether tying her down.  More landed around and on top of her.

Another box was within the first.  It too detonated.  A thick white substance with brown chunks in it splashed down.  Someone in Musser’s group threw up a barrier on the fly.  One of the Legendres?

Hadley, hunched over, did her best to straighten up, as she was weighed down by the gunk.

She screamed, loud and fierce enough that Lucy had to cover her ears.  Some of the construction materials slipped from where they sat.  Small branches and leaves fell from the tree.  The blades she was carrying glowed red, like they’d been in a furnace, and her eyes did the same.

John’s grip on Lucy’s shoulder tightened by increments as the scream continued, until she had to pull a hand from her ear and swat his hand away and break that grip.  He looked down at her, startled, like he hadn’t realized what he was doing.

The scream tore away the gunk and crap, freeing Hadley, and stirred up dirt, covering gunk around her.  Veins stood out on her arms and neck and took on that red glow.

The scream ceased.  She broke into a run.  Fast.

“I’ve heard of types like her,” John whispered.

She hurdled over construction material, chasing Toadswallow.  Twisting in the air, she used a practice.  Setting a part of the field on fire.  A small detonation scattered a pile of concrete blocks.

“Gore-strewn,” Avery said, as she drew nearer.  “There’s a bunch of them on campus.”

“We don’t know the specifics,” Lucy said.

“You can shoot them, and they’ll draw on their contract to War or one of War’s children,” John said, somber.  “They get time, and can shake off their imminent demise if they can do enough violence.”

There was more fire, more damage done.

Mr. Musser walked forward, toward the destruction and mess.  He bent down to pick up a plank, throwing it back atop the pile.  He kept only half an eye on what Hadley Hennigar was doing.  He looked up as something fell over, glass breaking.

“Being tied up too?” Avery whispered.

“Yes.  Or curses, or binding, or anything that troubles them.  But they have to do that violence.”

“She’s doing some,” Lucy observed.

The number of fires were increasing.  That was basic elemental practice, being liberally used.

“Gene,” Musser called out.

“A barrier.  I don’t like that fire being so close to the carpentry area.  All that sawdust.  Thank you.”

The front door of the big building opened.  Kevin and his girlfriend stepped outside, looking around at the chaos.

To Lucy’s Sight, Kevin’s gaze was a stain, subtle but vast, spreading over everything around him.  She could tell when he stopped looking around and started focusing on Musser.  The droplets of darkness beaded on Musser’s face and front, then slid off to the side like droplets on a windshield, over the top and sides of his head, and the sides of his neck and body.

“You’re all so noisy.  And messy.”

“Think of us as the police, causing a commotion as we try to apprehend a burglar.”

“A burglar?” the girlfriend asked.

“Or an arsonist.  There was a fire a few weeks back, wasn’t there?”

“There was.  Who was it, and what do they want?”

“There’s no telling, yet.  I hope Hadley doesn’t kill it.”

“When we have a child, Rae, let’s not call it something shitty like Hadley, of all things.”

“Yeah.  What should we call them, then?  What’s a good name?”

“Them?  Plural?  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, babe.  I was an only child, that’s good enough for the next generation.”

It was bad timing, that the patrol would come out like this and be so close, while Gashwad was underground and inaccessible.

“You may want to go,” John said.

“Why?” Lucy asked.  Then, in the same breath, said, “No.”

The explosions and new fires had stopped erupting around the construction site while she’d been listening to the conversation.

John drew his gun.  Head tilted, one arm against the tree, he aimed.  He glanced at Lucy.

“Are you telling me to go with that look?” Lucy asked.

“I was wondering if you’d tell me ‘no guns’, this time.”

Lucy looked over to where Musser’s group was, the figures just big enough for expressions to be made out.

She looked over at Avery, who had Snowdrop at her shoulder.  Avery’s eyes were visible behind the deer mask and it was clear her eyebrows were drawn together.  More in concern than anything, as Lucy read it.

“Can you not make us say it?” Lucy asked.

“You may want to go, then, before any decisions have to be made.  Move carefully, and remember, being still is better than being hidden, so long as you have cover, but being both is best.”

Lucy nodded, getting ready to go.

Hadley made her way back, holding her arm out, knife in hand.  And that knife was embedded in a limp, bloated body.  The body struggled a bit.

“She returns.  Did she get it?”

Hadley dropped her arm.  The corpse dropped to the ground, splitting open.  Lucy had to focus between Sight and sight to see.  The vest.  The monocle.  The little pig-like ears.

But it wasn’t Toadswallow.  A pig’s corpse, roughly his dimensions, wearing clothes like he did, and badly decaying, to the point that skin was slowly tearing from gravity alone.  Insect life, a slurry of insides, and a morass of rodents fanned out from the split belly of it.

“He got away,” Lucy whispered.

Snowdrop sneezed.  Avery squeezed Lucy’s arm.

Hadley Hennigar swayed on the spot, then collapsed, face-first into the corpse-thing.  Lucy cringed, and Avery made a face.

Some of the other students hurried forward to grab her, but hesitated to get close to the thing, covering their faces.

“If the gore-strewn can’t achieve the violence that they bought their extra time with, then they suffer an equivalent or worse fate,” John said.  “Trying to avoid that fate hurts their practice.”

“It’s a hobb,” ‘Gene’ Legendre said.

“What’s a hobb?” Lucy asked.

John shook his head.  Avery shrugged.

“A signpost, except it’s not a sign made of wood.”

“Obviously not made of wood.”

“It’s meant to inspire fear, sow confusion, and intimidate. They make them look like children, or like dead bodies, or animals injured by the roadside, to get people to draw close, but they’re rigged to move, because there’s stuff inside them.  It’s meant to gross out or scare the person that stumbles on it.  Different areas and groups have different hobbs they like to use.  It’s territorial.”

“He’s marking his territory?”

“No.  No, not like that.  He’s marking territory he wants, I think.  Hobbs like this are like a big ‘we are coming’ sign.”

“It’s a declaration of war, of sorts, I guess,” Lucy whispered.  They were huddled in the trees, and not exactly close to the tree’s edge, either.  She kept having to move her head to see past groups of trees and make out the people talking.

“Ah,” Avery murmured.  “I’d say that makes sense, but I’d be lying.”

“Alexander hasn’t been doing his housekeeping, it seems.  Pests should be cleared out from school grounds every once a season, at the very least.  From the surrounding region at least once a year.  This one was mature.”

“It’s possible it was brought here, Mr. Musser.”

“Do you have any, ah, specialists on campus?”

“If you’d like, I can take my leave, Musser.”

“If you want, Kevin.  Would you take my card?  In case of further commotion?”

“Ahem, we just expelled America Tedd, Mr. Musser.  Gave her a scare, sent some things after her to get her out of our hair.  Her sister’s still here, and she’s pissed.”

“I think we know what we’re doing, then.  If we stick her with this we can send her home easily enough.  Shall we see about having a conversation with her?  Kevin, since you haven’t left yet, could you give me a hand?”

“I don’t think I could.  I’ve been told to keep my nose out of anything curious.  All I know is you set a lot of fires and made a lot of noise, trying to apprehend a burglar.  Who is part of a very grotesque gang, if that’s their way of marking territory.  Here I thought Winnipeg had its crime problems.”

“Gene, then?  A hand?  Does anyone have water?  We can use it to wet my handkerchief.”

Gene walked over, but he was holding something.

“What’s this, Gene?  A compass?”

“It doesn’t point North.  It points to-“

The group of practitioners turned.

Gashwad, hiding in the midst of the building materials, scrambled for the treeline, a few dozen feet to the north.

Maddox pulled a chain free from his belt-loops, then swung the heavier, padlocked end in sweeping circles, clipping the grass as it dipped low.

Gashwad ran, looking over his shoulder, zig-zagging.  John leveled his gun, aiming.

He didn’t fire.  Maddox released the chain, and it soared through the air, with enough force that it remained straight, more like a thrown stick than a cord of any sort.

It arced, soaring, and then hit Gashwad, winding around him.  He collapsed.

“John,” Avery whispered.

“Shhh,” John was barely audible.  He adjusted the orientation of his gun, aiming.

“They rarely get up to mischief alone,” Gene said.

“Good.”  Musser spoke only the one word as he walked over.

Gashwad swore and grunted, flopping over, but the chain surrounded him, wound tight.

“John,” Avery whispered.  “You said you guys would be okay with all these binders and things around.”

“If they come looking for us in the trees, this damn thing can go off,” Lucy muttered.  Her hand felt like it was becoming a claw, the Nettlewisp like a lead weight.  She’d come on this excursion to protect them and let them know if the augurs started looking, while the people back at Elizabeth Driscoll’s workshop were protected by measures Elizabeth had taken.

She was starting to think that their guess about the Nettlewisp being a danger if they couldn’t find an excuse to deploy it.  She worried that it might turn on her and blind her if she wasn’t careful.

Maybe the augurs had looked to the future and seen the danger?

“We could bait them,” Avery said.  “Distract them from Gashwad.”

“We could,” John replied, “but then what?  What if the Hennigar girl rouses, screams again, and comes after us?  I’d sooner open fire and give you three girls cover to escape.”

“Stop saying you’re going to throw your life away,” Lucy said.

“It would be sacrifice, not throwing my life away.”

“Stop,” she hissed the word.  “You’re not expendable.”

“Who sent you?” Eugene Legendre asked.

“Suck on my hairy nips, boring-face!”

“Who sent you?  For the second time, I demand you to answer.”

“And choke on the hair!  I bind my nip-hairs, curl and twist, and slide past the mouth to the dangle-nard at the back of the throat!  Twist and knot and tie fast, tie tight!  When I get free, you’ll gag on it!”

“Who sent you?  For the third time, I compel you to answer!  I have bound goblins innumerable.  I have authority enough.  By ancient laws, you cannot refuse me.”

“I sent myself!  I am not bound by anything except this chain.  I was summoned, but it was by the tricks and trades of my companion you failed to catch, failure!  Is your daddy disappointed in you?  Imagine the look on his face when your throat is wrecked, the dangle-nard fallen off because the hair has twisted so tight!  You’ll taste me on the hair for months!”

“Seven minutes, give or take,” John murmured.  The gun didn’t waver.  He didn’t blink.

“Seven minutes until?”

“That he has to distract or hold out.”

“He’s trying to curse Eugene Legendre.  Uh, the Legendres, they’re goblin exterminators and sealers.”

“Another Legendre passed by Kennet once.  Miss deterred her.”

Eugene was exchanging a murmured conversation with Musser.

Musser stepped away, moving through the building materials, kicking the occasional thing aside, and lifting up toolboxes and things of nails.

“What did you do while you were back here?”

“I compel you, answer.”

Mr. Musser answered, “He laid traps.  The bigger one did some obvious things, like the slime box.  The small one did something to this stack of wood.  Something to this box of nails.”

“Gashwad did some work,” Lucy whispered.  “Messing with building supplies.  Toadswallow did some more overt stuff.  They managed to do some work, even with the barrier and the practitioners coming.”

“Mark or throw out the offending materials?”

“He spread the taint so it’s hard to find what he messed with.  We’ll have to throw out all of this wood.  And all of these nails.  These tools.  I’m worried about the building.”

“If he removed a nail and pushed something in, or a screw, or a sliver of twisted wood…”

Gashwad cackled again, louder.

Eugene booted Gashwad, hard.  Lucy could hear the clank.  She tensed.

“You weren’t summoned, but you didn’t come here for no reason.  Why did you come here?”

“No, give a proper answer.  Tell us what you want to keep secret.  Why did you come here?”

“To fight!  I live to fight!  I have deep seated, horrible insecurities about being too weak!”

“I compel you, for the third time I ask, tell me the true answer of why you’re here!”

“Cover your ears,” John said, aiming.  “Or go.  While they’re distracted.”

“I can only cover one,” Lucy said.

John reached around her head, putting one hand at her ear.  She put her right hand to the ear with the earring.

Gashwad opened his mouth, and then the lights in that area went out.

The sound followed, muffled by the hands at her ears.  A ‘bap’, sharp, and the sound of breaking glass.  Some practitioners had fallen over immediately, but others took a bit longer to do so.

“Tacks, crushed lightbulbs, cut up paperclips,” John said.  “And a minor explosive charge.  But that wasn’t seven minutes.  He must have cut the fuse before drawing their attention.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes, watching.  Practitioners were hurt, but nobody seemed to be dead or dying.  That was good.

Toadswallow picked his way over the writhing and struggling practitioners, kicked at the chain Eugene was pulling out, and bent down to undo the padlock at Gashwad’s chains with a tool he had.

Gashwad walked over to Eugene, plucked something off his chest, then jammed it into Eugene’s mouth.  Then he scampered off with Toadswallow, in the opposite direction to where Lucy and the rest of the group were huddled.

Kevin Noone’s eye was like a searchlight, but it didn’t really light things up as it swept over the area.  It was like a light was shining through a glass with drops of ink swirling in it; the ‘ink’ was thick enough that the light didn’t really penetrate, and it created more texture and pattern in shadow than anything.

He’d gone inside and he’d reappeared at the small detonation.

He didn’t bend down to help anyone, but he did lift a phone to his ear.

Musser was already on his feet.  Eugene was hacking and coughing.

“Spirits hear me,” Lucy said, louder than the murmurs and whispers she’d been using.  “We were prepared to let Lawrence Bristow be if he did the same for us, but he interfered with our classes, he’s threatened us, and he’s made no amends for the unwarranted attack on our home and territory.”

Some of the less injured were giving chase.  Eugene was among them, heading east.  They had nicks and cuts.

“Let this be first blood,” Lucy said.  “Bristow is not a leader, he’s a tyrant, and tyrants must be resisted.  He is not a leader, and I hope this drives that point home.  He doesn’t protect this space, he makes it hostile.  He doesn’t grow this place, he loses students.  He has no authority.  Let Alexander’s reckoning come later, as it may.”

“As it may,” Avery murmured.  “I don’t like violence though.  If they’re willing to make peace, we should be too.”

“For now,” Lucy said, watching the practitioners get to their feet.  Hadley Hennigar had roused enough to be the one dragging Maddox away, now.  Mr. Musser carried one of the other students.  It might have been Silas.  Just along for the ride with Maddox, maybe.

“Let’s head back.  Careful.”

Avery went ahead.  Snowdrop went human and followed her.

Lucy trailed, trying to listen for any scraps of conversation.

Nothing of note except frustration and anger.

They had to wait for a group of students to pass through the middle of all the workshops.  Another patrol, moving at a light jog, in the general direction of the explosion and the evacuating wounded.  The chance those flashlights would illuminate them was slim, but Lucy wasn’t about to risk it, and it seemed John had a similar mentality.

Lucy jumped a little.  She spotted the monocle reflecting the porch light from one of the workshops.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Avery said.

“Thanks to John’s preparations,” Gashwad growled.  He drew forward from the deeper shadows of the woods, casting aside bits of trash.  He had bits of glass and burned tacks dug into his flesh on one side of his face and shoulder, cuts, scars, and gritty bits where it looked like clusters of smaller fragments had bitten in, like bad zits.

“You did well,” John said.

“I’m guessing you had fun?” Lucy asked.

Gashwad cackled, nodding.

Other goblins were emerging now.  The one Avery had mentioned, with its brain in one end of a clear balloon, stuck in one ear and out the other.  There were a trio of goblins with oversized eyes, ears, and fangy mouth, respectively, who couldn’t seem to help but climb and fall over one another as they tried to get places, and a goblin with strips of white shopping bag bag tied to an arrangement of strings in a really bad fake beard.

“What did you end up getting done?” Lucy asked.

Gashwad reached down, then held up some nails.  Lucy almost touched them, then drew her hand back.

“Rusty nails,” Gashwad said.  “Hollow, see?  And if you put four together, in a wall without wires?”

He put them in the dirt, spaced out like a square, then pushed down.

“Makes a door?” Avery asked.

“We can allow ourselves into the big building when the time comes.  If they don’t get clever and find what Gashy did,” Toadswallow explained.  “When and if you need a jolly old distraction, you’ll have it.  And you lot will be with me, am I right?  You’ve been kept out for long enough, you’ve got catching up to do.”

The little goblins made noises of assent.

“We’ll leave you to it.  Be safe,” Lucy said.  “It’s dangerous here.  If this is all you do, your obligation to support us is more than discharged.”

“Oh, we’re having fun,” Toadswallow smiled, mouth drawing out at the sides until it was ear-to-ear.  “Let’s have at it.  Keep an ear out about America Tedd’s whereabouts, will you?”

Lucy, Avery, and John headed back to the workshop, checking the coast was clear before crossing from the treeline to the back door.  Verona held the door open, holding a finger to her lips.

At the front door, a group was addressing Elizabeth, who refused to let them in.

“It was a brazen attack.  Sabotage of the school.”

“And you’re accusing Liberty?”

“She’s a goblin practitioner.”

“I can testify.  Liberty’s been here since she got back.”

“Studying!” Liberty called out.  “You know, like we’re supposed to be able to do, except Bristow’s a shitty headmaster!?”

“That’s not like you, Liberty!” a girl at the door called out.

“You don’t know me, shitmongler!”

“We’ll be brief with any and all interviews, we just want to get to the bottom of this,” the guy at the door said.

“Too bad.  My workshop, my rules, and I say no intruders.”

“How many people do you have in there?”

“Ask Bristow’s pet augurs if you really want to know.  I rented this place.  Now leave.  You’re breaking rules as long as you’re here.”

“Students aren’t allowed to brazenly suborn the headmaster.”

“For one thing, as far as we’re aware, he’s not officially headmaster.  Nothing was signed, nothing was given.  That’s not in the handbook or rules.  It’s an expectation, not a hard rule, and if we want to talk hard rules and expectations, Mr. Bristow’s violated several.  We paid tuition, we get classes.  He has no grounds to stop us.”

“Really?  That’s weak.”

“It’s enough.  He started the school and ran it before, he ceded it, the person he ceded it to abandoned his duties and lost his support, so who else does it go to, except Bristow?”

“It’s weak, Jeremiah.  Now leave, or I’ll petition Raymond Sunshine about the disruption in my special projects.”

“Good job, Elizabeth,” Lucy murmured, as the door closed.

“Did it go okay?” Verona asked.

Elizabeth approached, standing to one side, arms folded.

“A little close for my comfort,” Avery said.  “But we have our distraction for later, if we need one.”

“All that for a distraction,” Lucy said.  She pulled off her mask, and gave her hood a shake, so her witch’s hat would turn from a bit of a brim at the front and an exaggerated point to a normal hat again.  She knocked the mask against the wall twice, and the glamour broke, coming off as dust, returning the mask to its normal colors.

“It’s groundwork,” Verona said.

“Aye,” Alpeana said, from the ceiling.  “You an’ I will go out efter, willnae we?”

“Aye,” Verona echoed her.  “Yeah.  Others are barred from the school premises, but if they’re invited or accompanied by a practitioner, they can slip inside.  And it’s not technically hurting anyone if you carry out your official duties, is it?  You’re just… smoothing out wrinkles and maybe giving someone cause for introspection and self improvement?”

“Be safe,” Lucy said.

“I think Tymon and Talos were planning something too,” Elizabeth said.

“We are,” Talos said.  He and his brother had laid out a few blankets, stacking them on top of one another.  It looked like the bottom one, like with many of the makeshift beds, was a fire blanket.  The others were sheets.  They lay on them, Talos on one side, Tymon on the other, and Jorja in the middle with her phone out, watching a show.

“Be careful,” Lucy said.  “They were out in force.”

“Speaking of safe and careful, that thing still hasn’t popped?” Verona asked.

Lucy looked down at the Nettlewisp.  She made a face.

“Might be time to rinse it down the drain,” Verona said.

“That might set it off, and curses bounce back to the user.  We were theorizing this might too.”

“It’s nice to know they aren’t spying on us, at least,” Verona said.  “Elizabeth said that observation can affect the outcome of rituals, and since she requisitioned this space for a project, and she gets to set rules about this space… she can force them to not get involved.  Or if they try, it’s technically a violation of rules.”

Tashlit, who had been sitting down, rose to her feet.  She looked over, peering at the flower.  It was hard to look Tashlit in the eyes, because there were so many places to look.

“Shield your eyes as you wash?” Avery suggested, to Lucy.

In the background, Tashlit moved her hands all over, as if trying to cover every eye with two arms.  She clutched at the loose skin on her arms, pushing it around to cover the eyes that peeked through tears.

“You should be fine so long as you stand back,” Verona told her, smirking.

The corner of the workshop had a little kitchen area, with a sink, hotplate, and coffee maker.  Lucy put the water on, and rested her hand on the counter.  The ‘blossom’ of the nettlewisp stirred.

“Little bit of water at first.  Point it away, shield your eyes,” Avery said.

Lucy made a small anxious sound.  “It feels like trying to burn off a giant firework that’s strapped to my hand.”

“Don’t say that, because glamour listens,” Verona said.  “Just rip off the bandaid.”

“You’re tough, you’re brave, you’ve done the implement ritual,” Avery said.

“We’re all going to be dead or hurting when this is all over,” Snowdrop said.

Avery put her hand over Snowdrop’s head and pulled Snowdrop back into a hug-from-behind.

Lucy covered her eyes and shoved her hand under the water.

The water made it heavier, and glamour-tinted water ran down her arm.

She stopped, pulling back, as she realized.  Her hand was lower than her shoulder.

Glamour-touched water had flowed uphill, up her arm.  And now as the water ran off, the glamour remained, condensing into thin tendrils and vines.

The ‘delicate’ flower with its bristling needles and blade-like leaves was still sitting in her palm, and it now had roots running along the length of her arm, colorful, and tipped with spikes like sewing needles, narrow, long, and gleaming.  It made it hard to move her arm without stabbing herself.

“Ooh, that’s far fae guid,” Alpeana said, from the ceiling.

“Not helping,” Lucy muttered, under her breath.

“Crap, crap, crap,” Avery muttered.

“It’ll be fine,” Verona said, calm.

“Don’t gainsay yourself,” Avery said.

“I’m not and I won’t.  It’ll be fine,” Verona said, looking from Avery to Lucy, who held her arm out, rigid, hand clutching the bristling, stirring blossom, staring at the thing.  “It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She made herself relax.  “What have you been eating, little flower-thing?  I don’t think it’s just water.”

“Attention?” Verona asked.  “Ignore it, and it might wither.  Let’s get settled, sleep, and tackle it in the morning.”

Lucy had to fight the notion that she could wake up and find the vines had crawled across her entire body, multiple flowers manifesting.  She pushed it out of mind, forcing herself to be calm, and nodded.

Sleep.  They needed rest to tackle what came next.  Bristow would surely retaliate.  They’d have to be alert.

“Get settled,” Verona said.  “I’ll go out to take Alpeana around to the school, and then we’ll sleep.”

Lucy settled on the blankets Verona had arranged, lying on her side, arm outstretched, the needles resting on the floor beside the blanket, her hand heavy.

The bang startled Lucy awake.  It startled everyone awake.

“Jesus!” Elizabeth called out.

Lucy’s arm felt weirdly light.  She sat up, stretching her arm, and flexed her hand.  Her muscles were sore, her hand stiff, but not in a way that didn’t feel like, well, she’d had a dead weight shackled to her palm for hours and hours.

“Nettlewisp went off,” Avery said.

The needles studded the ceiling, and one of the points it penetrated the ceiling crackled with a bit of electricity.

“Did it punch through wiring?” Lucy asked, flexing and stretching her arm and hand.

The electricity stirred, made some vague shapes, and then stopped.  The wound in the ceiling began to bleed.  Thick, black, congealing ichor.

“Careful,” Lucy said.  “They just looked in.  We might want to check why.”

“On it,” John said.  He was awake, sitting on the table by the window.  He hopped off and looked outside.

Lucy touched her skin.  Where the nettlewisp had sat, her palm was stained shades of blue, pink, and red.  Her fingertips were black, but not from necrosis.  The tips were drawn together, until the point of the thumb and the tip of the thumbnails were hard to distinguish from one another.

“This isn’t permanent, is it?”

“I can’t imagine it is,” Verona said.

“They’re here,” John said.

More people stirred, climbing to their feet.  Tymon, Lucy, and Elizabeth.

“You three!” Estrella Vanderwerf called out.  “I’m passing you a message!”

Lucy didn’t speak.  Off to her left, Verona and Avery looked through the window.

“Use tricks like that to block us, we’ll throw Nicolette at them again and again.  She likes you, but maybe if we make her face your defenses like this enough times, she’ll change her mind.”

“What are you doing to her?”

“Only what she’s agreed to,” Estrella said.  “We’ll be paying more visits.  I hope you’re keeping an eye out.”

As easily as they’d come, they walked back to the main school building.

Tashlit reached for her, and Lucy shied back a bit.

Tashlit reached down, and touched the weirdly soft, soggy flesh of her hand to Lucy’s arm.  She gave it a stroke.

“You’re a healer?” Lucy asked.

Tashlit held her fingers close together.  ‘Small’.

“A bit,” Verona said.  “You know how Amine can do favors for his god, and that gets him credit he can spend?  And he never knows exactly how much credit he’s got?  So he’s gotta guess or make sure he has a surplus?  Tashlit can’t really do any favors or anything big, but you could say the sink fills up at a trickle, and if there’s enough in there, she can do little things.”

Tashlit made the ‘small’ gesture again.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

“Did you guys manage to get a means of communication going?” Lucy asked.

“She doesn’t write, I think she lost the ability when she changed.  But we were working out some ways.  Alpeana said if she could finish her rounds here instead of dipping back home, she’d try to bring me and Tashlit together in dreams so we could have a conversation.”

“I didn’t know she could do that.  I wouldn’t mind seeing you guys in dreams.”

“That’d be fun to try, but we’ve got all day to spend together.”

Tymon cleared his throat.

It was the middle of the night.  The Bristow faction had come to disturb their sleep and keep them on edge, and some of the people present looked like they were on edge.

More at stake.  Like families, and friendships.

And for those too young to understand, or whatever else they were, like Jorja or Dom, they were just kids who wanted to sleep.

We’re a bit chatty, Lucy thought.

She looked down at her arm as she lowered herself down to the floor.  She stared at the outstretched limb and the faded colors and weirdness at the fingertips until Elizabeth shut off the lights.

Her arm dropped to the makeshift mattress that she, Avery, Verona, and Snowdrop were sharing.  Tiny opossum feet pressed against her back as Snowdrop stretched.

Verona laid a hand on the altered arm, smiling.

Lucy felt painfully homesick as she pulled off the earring and laid it next to her pillow.

It couldn’t be easy.  Lucy tried once more to draw the circle.

It was like the chalk wasn’t a chalk line, but a pile of chalk dust, and the wind kept blowing at it.  Or she was trying to draw in iron filings and there were magnets under the ground, in elaborate shapes and arrangements.

The earring had its drawbacks, apparently.  Lucy stood, hands on hips, and looked down at the chalk, which had pulled away into spikes, curves, and star-like shapes.

“What’s this?” Verona asked.  She stepped out the back door, hair messy, and rested her chin on the railing of the back steps of the little workshop.  The wood was damp from the past few days of rain.

“I don’t think I can draw plain circles anymore,” Lucy said.  “Or it’s harder.”

“You were never ‘plain’,” Verona said.  “You had style, flourish.  You wore nice clothes and had the best hair in class.”

“But it’s true,” Verona said, easily.  “This is a good excuse to tune your practice to be more you.”

“Go, you barbarian!” Avery called out.  “Be safe!”

Fork clamped in her teeth, Snowdrop scampered out of the workshop building, down the stairs, and onto the grass.  She wasn’t a very fast runner in animal form.

“Miss ‘I don’t need to wait in line for the toilet if I use the woods’.”

“She is a wild animal,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.  How’s your arm?”

Ninety-five percent better.  She could see the shadows here and there, and there was darkness like bruising under her fingernails.

“Not bad.  I guess you have to be really deliberate about the counterattack you’re doing, then.”

“I’m just glad Nicolette was forced to spy on us.  They could’ve hurt us more by not.”

“Maybe she knew that?” Verona asked.  “It’d be nice to have a conversation with her.  I didn’t have the impression we were enemies now.”

“No,” Avery agreed.  “What’s this diagram?”

“My earring implement is mucking this up.”

“So go along with it?” Verona asked.  “What are you trying to do?”

“Magic circle for a gated connection block.”

“Ah ha.  Well, I guess you’d want something to radiate out, and something to receive.  If you wanted to play into the earring, then you’d want to make clear declarations in the earring’s language.”

“I’m here, notice me, pay attention.  And… this ear, it’s framed, it’s listening.”

Verona knelt down, helping as Lucy drew on the pavement beside the back steps of the workshop.

“Half circles.  Think satellite dish.  And we want to make this decorative, so if we repeat the pattern, if we have a curl here, maybe mime the shape of the outside of the ear…”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “That feels too art-y.  Like, if I’m going to re-learn some diagrams and customize them…”

“I guess to do a barrier, you want something radiating or shining out, right?  So it’d be more like a star or a sun than a circle.”

“So what if we did a triangle shape, but put the interlinked diamonds of the connection sign into the design?”

“And then do that around one side, and link it to a receiver… where we designate the target.”

Lucy bent down, then, opening her laptop on the edge of the porch to check spelling and address, wrote it down in chalk.  That, at least, didn’t fight her.  If anything it was a bit easier to get the chalk to do as she wanted as it wore down.

“Ah,” Verona said.  “Well, I won’t intrude.  We’ll guard the door.”

“I don’t want the augurs to listen in either.”

“Then radiate out noise and static.  Make it violent and unpleasant to try.  Like this, and like this, and… there.  And a bit of an alarm or cut to the call if they do break through and start listening, including anyone around the corner.  That’s better, right?”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Thank you.”

“Cool.  We’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Maybe as soon as Snowdrop- there she is.”

Snowdrop came back, munching on something.

“What are you eating?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop turned human to stomp her way up the steps.

Lucy moved things around, unplugging her laptop from the wall and then made her way down the steps and back around to the circle, which looked more like a sun giving birth to a star made of overlapping lines of writing.  The static noise filled her ears as she approached, then died as she crossed into the circle itself.

She sat, her back to the wall.  She could feel the damp ground against her butt and the bottom edges of her thighs. A bit uncomfortable, but there weren’t a lot of locations that worked.

She hit the ‘call’ button.

It took a second, then the call connected.

The woman on screen was First Nations, but very different from Jessica, with a fairly stout frame and round face, with very red lips, and a cigarette between her lips that already had the stains from the lipstick.

“Hello, you’re coming through okay.  Hi Lucy, how’s my volume?”

“It’s good.  It’s good, thank you for agreeing to this on short notice.”

“Of course.  Are you okay?  You’re away at a camp, was it?”

“I was.  I am.  Yes.  Not really a camp so much as a summer school.”

“Commendable.”  Dr. Mona smiled.  She took a second to settle in, adjusting her chair and moving tea to where she could reach it.

It made it easier, a bit at least, for Lucy to relax as well.

“Yep.  Getting some sunlight.  There are too many people outdoors.  Sorry, by the way, if I get interrupted or the call drops.  I’ll try to email you if it does and I can’t reconnect.”

“Whatever works for you.  But you sounded anxious in the email you sent me at… what was it, five forty five in the morning?  You couldn’t sleep?”

“No, not that well,” Lucy said.

She didn’t like admitting weakness.  But talking to Dr. Mona felt like talking to Booker.  Like Dr. Mona was a rock.  Chill and very secure in herself.  It was cool.

“What’s happening?”

“A lot of stuff.  A student, uh, I think she and her family have been kicked around a lot by the government, prison system, that sorta thing.  She was working on something really major for her cousin and it got totally and completely ruined by this total jerkass.  And that was the first of a bunch of things that all happened.  There’s all this history and fighting between teachers, and my friends and I are getting dragged into it.  Depending on how it goes, we might go home early and I don’t want to.”

“We’ve talked about history a lot.”

“There’s always history.”

“If you’re unhappy there, is it the worst thing in the world if you have to go?”

“A part of me wishes it would happen,” Lucy confided.  “But it would break Verona’s heart if we did, probably.”

“How’s she taking all of this?”

“She’s great.  She’s ridiculous.  She’s always been weird and this is so her.  I don’t know how to handle it.”

“I think Avery’s resilient when it comes to stuff like this.  I don’t think she loves it, and she was especially hurt because the girl I mentioned before, working on the thing for her cousin?  She felt a connection to her.”

“Ah.  Well we’ve talked about some of that.”

“Not romantic.  But… they were similar in ways.  Maybe Jessica was someone Avery wanted to be like, later.  Traveled and stuff.  Plus, you know, Avery may be one of the most caring people I know.”

“So it hit her hard.  I can see that.”

“But she’s into this.  She’s tackling it.  But it’s like, Verona, the more we’re in this the more I feel like Verona’s pulled into it all and I’m pushed out and that sucks.  I had a dream that we were separated.”

“Related, do you think?”

“It kind of happened before this really kicked off.  Or during, but… more like it felt a bit prophetic.”

“It’s possible the hints were there before things got worse, and your subconscious took them in.”

There was a noise in the distance.  She turned her head.

“Oh,” Lucy said.  She touched her ear.  “Verona and Avery made it together.”

“Those are some pretty terrific friends, I’d say.  That’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said, smiling.  “Do you think I’m being paranoid?  I should listen to this?”

“I remember being back in University, I went to a student learning workshop, and we were given tips on taking tests.  We were told that those who stuck with their first answer on multiple choice tests did far better than those who second-guessed themselves and changed their answers.  If you have worries, you’re having dreams and you feel like they could be prophetic, then you should trust your feelings.”

“Even if there’s nothing to it, I don’t think you lose anything by trying to be a good friend, and paying extra attention when she’s a good friend, making you a gift like that.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, smiling.

“I have to ask.  With everything that’s going on, and what sounds like a minority student that was targeted, are you safe?”

Lucy looked down at her arm, faintly discolored.  She really hoped it would go back all the way to normal.

Lucy let out a bit of an inconsistent, shuddering sigh.

“If you aren’t, I can call your mom.  I could help you navigate that phone call.  Or if her work is a problem, you said her schedule was inconsistent, she can’t always get away?  I could work with her on getting you on a bus.”

“It’s tough to time things sometimes, unless there’s advance notice.  That’s not really it.  I need to be here.  I want to learn this stuff.  It’s just… an awful lot of really old, intense, powerful families.”

“Ah, that kind of place.  Money to spare?”

“Kind of.  Old rivalries, even between teachers.  And then me, only non-white person at this whole place, after Jessica left over her thing with her relative.  And none of us three really belong but I’m the only one of us three who seems to really feel that.”

“Yeah.  In a lot of ways.  Like, a lot of eyes on us.  Some hostile.  Pressure like that.  And also like, we’re deep underwater and everything’s harder.  It helps, knowing I could call and get that bus or whatever.”

“Absolutely.  Your safety takes priority.”

Dr. Mona ventured, “So Verona’s as happy as… I don’t want to say a pig in mud, because she’s not a pig.”

“She’s a bit of a pig, if you look at her room, but she’s like a cat.  And here she’s a cat in a yarn store.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

This was so much better than her last therapist.  It felt more like a conversation, but it wasn’t like conversations with Verona or even Avery, where it could sometimes feel like she was walking uphill every step of the way.

“A cat in a yarn store.  You’re- would I be wrong in guessing it’s like a technology camp?  And she’s into computers?”

“There’s some technology stuff, yeah.  And she’s into almost everything here.”

“And it’s hard to connect to that when you feel so out of your element.”

Lucy wanted to elaborate but she wasn’t sure how, so she shrugged.

“And Avery?  How would you describe her?  We touched on it earlier.  She’s distracted?”

“A bit.  Because of Jessica.  Angry.  But she’s relatively okay.  It’s hard to put my finger on it.  I don’t know her as well.”

“Maybe this is a time to do that?  It could be that she feels nearly as isolated there as you do.  Or she doesn’t but if she’s relatively okay, she could be more of a listening ear.  You seem to both have feelings over this incident with Jessica.  Maybe it would be constructive for the two of you to do something to reach out?”

“It seemed like Jessica was mad at everyone, us included.  I’m not sure it would be welcome.”

“You’ve told me you had trouble connecting to her, like you did with Verona.  That’s a tall order, considering your history.”

“That word keeps coming up.”

“And perhaps this is a time to start?  What do you think?”

“I think it sounds like a plan.”

“Is there a parents day coming up?  Because if you had that to look forward to-”

“What?  I thought you and your mom got along.”

“We do.  We do.  But this place… if there was a parents day, then people would die.”

“Ahh.  I’m so sorry it’s such a hostile place.”

“So am I.  I’m not surprised though.”

“You were apprehensive, before going.  I guess it goes to show, trust your instincts.”

“About that, I wanted to touch on something from a conversation yesterday evening-”

There was more commotion.  Lucy felt a sinking feeling in her gut.

“Can I get back to you?  Just need to see what’s happening,” Lucy told Dr. Mona.

“Of course.  I hope everything’s okay.”

Lucy had already put her laptop down and Dr. Mona grew faint as she hurried over.  She kept facing it, watching to make sure it was okay, as she walked around to the corner of the building.  John stood at the corner, arms folded.

Dom and Elizabeth were at the front end of the parking lot.  With a pair of adults who looked awfully similar to them.

Elizabeth glanced at Lucy, then mouthed the word ‘sorry’.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“Their parents were called.  They came to take them home.  They don’t feel it’s safe for them here.”

“Elizabeth is leaving?”

“The money spent for her remaining time at the workshop was refunded,” John said.

Meaning we don’t have a place to stay at night.  We have to stay in the school?  Split up and at the mercy of the staff?

Lucy walked back to her laptop.  She plunked herself down heavily.

“Is everything okay?” Dr. Mona asked.

“It’s nothing you could help with.  It’s institutional.  It’s this place, these families.”

“I could call the person in charge, or we could have a video conference, and I could try being your advocate.  I’ve helped students with schools, things like boy scouts, and disability accommodations before.  I’m pretty darn good at it.”

I can only imagine how that would go, Lucy thought, wry.

But the wryness didn’t put a smile on her face.  Her expression, visible in the little window in the corner of the screen, was serious, frustrated, eyebrows knit together in perpetual concern.

“Can we talk later this week, maybe?”

“We can definitely try.  Do you want to make an appointment?”

“Can it be last minute, like this?  It’s okay if not.”

“Message me.  We’ll work something out.”

“Okay.  I should go handle this.  Thank you, for taking the call.  And for this.”

“Of course, Lucy.  Even if things start getting better, do you think you could send me a message, let me know?  I’ll be worrying.”

“Alright. Good luck.”

Lucy hung up the call and turned off the laptop.

I should go, she’d said.  She’d terminated the call so she could leave.

She sat where she was, her butt a bit damp from the wet pavement that hadn’t dried out in the shadow of the big building, her back to the wall, hair a bit messy, and her lightweight laptop heavy against her lap.

There were fifty things that jumped to mind as priorities: people to talk to, instructions from her therapist to follow through on, on Avery, on sorting herself out, stuff to plan, countermeasures and defenses to prepare, stuff to manage with the Kennet Others here, and stuff to do here for the long term in Kennet, with the Carmine Beast and everything.

So many things, in fact, that she did none of it, sitting in the shadows beside the workshop, scratching absently at her arm, for just a little while.